#trigger talk

I have this one 'traditional' trigger. (I do have other triggers but it's mostly random shit? But we're talking about stuff traditionally tagged for) And it's frustrating, because I want to write and explore it/it's effects on people, but I have to do so *so freakin' carefully* because it can get me fucked up.

In this case I want to write on the experience of having been stalked. Now, I was not the person stalked, but one of my family members when I was a kid *was* and had to stay with us for half a year, half a country away from her home with her baby, while the cops fucking did nothing and her life was being actively threatened.

It actually became a fairly famous case for it's time and a true crime documentary was made about it. Ha. Ha ha.

Anyway, being a kid and seeing that terror up close and personal, and hearing about the very graphic death threats made against a family member, fucked me up a bit. I won't repeat any of the lines here because fuck that, but shit involved dismemberment. It was fucking dark.

Didn't help that years later one of my ex-friends cyber stalked me for over two years as well which yay re-traumatized me! *jazz hands*. Like one example- the first and only time I said 'peep' online *vaguely* about our fallout (basically a 'wow I'm doing so much better since person left!' with no names), on an account I had created after we fell out, over a *year* after that happened... within 4 hours I got brigaded and spammed and the art competition I was in was threatened about me.

I had to block them and the friends they convinced I was the devil for years. They kept following me with random fucking accounts. Honestly, if I block you and you're like 'wtf', I am sorry it is entirely possible your name just included one of the words I knew they would use in their usernames and I still just knee-jerk block that.

Oh- btw I got to stay in the art competition it was fine, my painting got 4th place, but fucking hell. Mostly the people running it were like 'holy shit that was crazy, I'm so sorry you're having to deal with that'.

And that second situation probably wouldn't have fucked me up as much without the first formative years bit, but it is what it is.

So. And unlike my only other kinda traditional trigger, aka religious trauma, that I can engage with on a LOT of different levels and still be fine, only with a subset of things in there I need to be careful on... whereas even the vaguest talk of stalking fucks me the fuck up.

But I want to explore it, even if it's just a little bit. I want to highlight even if you're functional, the kind of low-key constant vigilance it causes. Like fuck, even typing the above vague shit about the friend fallout has me paranoid and is the most I've said on a public channel in *five fucking years*. It's been half a decade and I still get tense.

I want to write about how maddening it is to deal with a ridiculous level of paranoia, but also it was because you needed to have it.

And maybe it's because I have a character now I can reasonably explore it with in a... not light hearted way, but in a way that is not threatening because it deals with the lasting effect, vs the event. Because I can relate to Mecha Man flinching. To him instantly doing a sweep of the room when Royd says his identity at a whisper. Because he was a famous solo super, and whether it was villains or fans you know he had to deal with some bullshit.

And not woobifying shit. You deal with it. You get practical. It becomes second nature to do sweeps and lock downs of accounts, to set up an alarm system, etc. Because even after the issue is solved and the person who caused the fear is gone, you still work around it. That's the part I want to explore, how how you operate as a person changes.

Anyway.